The present invention relates to a wedging-type freewheeling clutch having an inner ring and an outer ring with wedging members arranged between the rings and carried in a cage, combined with a roller bearing and/or a ball bearing.
Frequently, freewheeling clutches are required to transmit a large torque and to include bearing properties for absorbing large radial and axial forces although the space requirements of the clutch are minimal. The requirement for small dimensions in freewheeling clutches yield technical problems in the realization of the freewheeling couplings. Thus, for example, with a wedging member height of only a few millimeters, a uniform positioning of the wedging members on the outer and inner rings should be ensured.
Underlying the invention is the problem of providing a wedging-type freewheeling clutch with suitable bearing properties which provide optimum characteristics of bearing loadability, transferrable torque and outer dimensions. It should be possible to produce the clutch with commercially available bearings, in particular a needle bearing, by simple reconstruction of the clutch in correspondence to the respective requirements. Through this invention, a freewheeling clutch is formed having both coupling properties and bearing properties simultaneously.
German Pat. No. 1,060,670 discloses a known construction of a roller bearing having a freewheeling locking mechanism wherein a bearing of otherwise conventional construction has several cage pockets accommodating blocking rolls. According to the teaching of the patent, any conventional roller bearing can be used without further modification as a freewheeling locking mechanism through the removal of a few roll bodies and replacement with blocking rolls to bring about blocking into the freed cage pockets. The surfaces on the outer and inner rings simultaneously form the running paths of the roller bearing and the counter-clamping surfaces for the blocking rolls. Such a construction, however, has the disadvantage that the running tracks of the rings are deformed by the high pressure of the blocking rolls pressing on local areas. Small deformations or damages are intensified during operation by the rollers impacting the deformations and may lead to premature failure of the freewheeling clutch.